


Perfect Day

by magikfanfic



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Backstory, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Rogue One, probably not canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-11-06 18:14:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17944664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magikfanfic/pseuds/magikfanfic
Summary: “Today was perfect,” Chirrut says with a slightly dreamy sigh as he flops back onto his narrow, simple bed in the narrow, simple room they share. He threads his hands behind his head and closes his eyes and hums.





	Perfect Day

**Author's Note:**

> My late Valentine's Day gift to the fandom. Fluff.

I.

“Today was perfect,” Chirrut says with a slightly dreamy sigh as he flops back onto his narrow, simple bed in the narrow, simple room they share. He threads his hands behind his head and closes his eyes and hums.

On the other side of the room, robes caked in mud from a day spent slogging through the kyber caves clearing the tunnels so that they can be used again now that the Jedhan rainy season has passed, Baze stares at him, mouth open. Chirrut is just as caked in mud as he is, currently smearing it across the duvet, and Baze is certain that later tonight Chirrut will be using that in his tactics to cajole his way into sharing Baze’s bed with him, an occurrence that has been happening more and more recently, an occurrence that Baze cannot quite fathom and hasn’t really been stopping. Chirrut’s closeness, his warmth, even his ungainly sprawl, which takes up most of the bed and leaves Baze trapped right up against the wall, squeezed into a space that should be much too small for him but somehow isn’t, helps Baze sleep. It shouldn’t. It should be confining, an invasion, but it’s not. Baze likes the pressure of Chirrut’s limbs thrown over his own and the way that Chirrut is warm like cupping his hands around kyber crystals. He likes the way that Chirrut never quiets even in sleep, mumbled snatches of strange conversations in several different languages rolling off his tongue and into Baze’s ears like a lullaby. Everything about Chirrut in sleep is soothing, which is strange considering that everything about Chirrut waking can be taxing, annoying, frustrating, irritating. And, ultimately, endearing. Because Chirrut is Chirrut and that has always been enough to outweigh everything else.

Sometimes, though, he cannot fathom Chirrut’s riddles. For all of the books that Baze has read, for all of the ways in which he excels in nearly every subject the Whills can teach, for all his hours spent in the archives digging through one ancient, obscure text after another, when it comes to Chirrut, sometimes even Baze cannot suss him out. This is one of those times so Baze just stands there, peeling away the layers of his soiled robes, knowing that it will be easiest to let them dry thoroughly so he can crack and brush away the mud before washing them, he cannot understand what Chirrut could possibly mean. 

Apparently having gotten tired of waiting for an answer, Chirrut opens his eyes, black, endless, but dancing with stars, and turns his head to look fully at Baze. The motion drags another smear of mud across the duvet, and Baze winces automatically. Chirrut’s bedding will need to be washed, too, which is probably something Baze will end up doing. Left to his own devices, Baze thinks Chirrut would sleep in soiled sheets and dress in muddy robes and let his hair grow long, let it tangle in the wind, call it all the will of the Force when he is really just being lazy, seeing how long he can go unkempt before someone will take care of him. 

Was there anyone to tend to Chirrut before the temple, before Baze? Have they spoiled him completely? Is that a crime?

“Don’t you think it was a perfect day,” Chirrut says, and it’s not a question because Chirrut likes to make statements out of questions, doesn’t appreciate giving people the option to disagree with him. 

Baze, unlike some of their peers, does not balk from disagreeing. He thinks this might be one of the reasons that he and Chirrut are friends. Chirrut enjoys making games, little challenges, tests for everyone around him. He likes puzzles and riddles. He doesn’t really want you to agree with him, but he wants you to think that is what he wants, wants to see if people will simply go along with him because he is Chirrut Imwe shining star of the Temple of the Whills or if they will stand up and be themselves.

Baze may not be much, may only be the youngest son of a poor Jedhan family, left to the Whills in his infancy, may only be a baker, reader, kyber caver, gardener, jack of all trades, almost Guardian, may not be anyone’s pride and joy, may be weak in the Force and weak in his own will at moments, may not be enough, but he is himself. Always. He has learned all of his flaws and failings and accepted them, learned to love them or at least how to try and love them even when they feel like heavy stones slung around his neck, boulders from the crust of their moon rather than light kyber necklaces. Baze Malbus is always himself even when that means dreary and stoic and quiet and argumentative and hard to know. He hopes this is something that Chirrut likes about him. 

Chirrut blinks and purses his mouth a little, waiting.

Huffing a breath out through his nose, Baze lets him wait. Chirrut hates waiting. Chirrut hates not getting whatever he wants when he wants it. That’s the sort of thing that comes from being the Whills’ shining star, the ruffian plucked from the streets because his Force sense was so bright, so strong, so effervescent that it led one of the temple Guardians to it, through the crowded streets of NiJedha, picking its way into the squalor where the homeless children live, the ones who have decided they will not come to the temple for whatever reason or maybe think the temple would not take them-- an untruth, the temple will take anyone who wants to come, help anyone who has need--right to the edge of a hut built from refuse where Chirrut stood, too skinny, gap-toothed, hair a tangled mess, face covered in mud and blood, knuckles marred with cuts and scabbed, but grinning, arms thrown wide like something mythic. Baze remembers. He was the Guardian’s initiate. He remembers Chirrut standing like one with absolutely no fears in all the world despite being immersed at the very bottom of it. Even in the refuse, even with mud on his face, even bloodied, even dressed in tatters, Chirrut glowed, Chirrut emitted warmth. A kyber crystal in a boy. A kyber crystal made a boy.

Baze, dressed in initiate robes. Baze with his hair washed and oiled and braided. Baze with his clean face and careful hands. Baze with a full stomach who, despite what could have been the unfortunate consequences of his birth, was well taken care of and looked it. Baze who should have, by rights, been the better looking of the two, thought Chirrut was the loveliest thing he had ever seen. Baze had been so moved that he had cried and, when asked later by his master, said it was because he could feel the Force, that he had finally felt the Force move.

Lies. The first time he had lied to his master. It was not the Force. It was only Chirrut. It is still only Chirrut when he says it, when they ask and he answers. (“Can you feel the Force, Malbus?” His eyes on Chirrut, his mind on Chirrut, his heart on Chirrut. “Yes.”) It isn’t really a lie, though. The Force is in everything so the Force is in Chirrut. For some, the Force is a cosmic entity that exists beyond the realm of perception. For others, the Force is the lifeblood of the universe itself, in and of everything. For the Jedi, it is an energy to be tapped and used. For Baze, it is Chirrut. Is it possible to have a wrong way to love the Force?

Chirrut hates waiting; Baze is always trying to teach him patience, but he does not wish to be cruel, does not want to ignore him outright, upset him. So, finally, once he has shucked off his outer robes and inner robes and his loose pants, once he is standing there in only his undertunic, which hangs down to his knees and is blissfully free of mud, does Baze say, while reaching a hand up to check his hair, “No.”

“No?”

Why does Chirrut sound stricken? Why does Chirrut sound harmed? (“To the quick. To the core,” as Chirrut would say in a dramatic voice with his hand thrown over his heart because something in Chirrut has never figured out that there is no reason to manufacture a drama inside the temple, that him remaining here does not rely on him charming anyone out of anything. They keep him because he is. That is all that he need do, be.) “No,” Baze says, crosses arms over his chest, big, barrel-shaped, thick, solid, and he wonders if he looks like his family when he remembers his body, when he is touched, when he spars, when he dresses. Do I look like someone? Am I built like someone? What is my body made for? Carrying. Carrying weight. His own and everyone else’s. The Force’s. So much weight in the world. He is built like Jedha, solid, meant to last. 

“The caves were full of mud and damp. There is dirt on our robes. There is dirt in my hair.” Which will need to be washed again, itself a chore because he will have to undo the braids and then redo all of them with oil and brushing and his hair requires so much work, but it is his, it is him, and it stays. “Your bed is covered in mud. And there is more to do tomorrow because the caves are still impassable for mining. We missed the morning meal because you slept too long. We missed the midday meal because we could not hear the bells.” The kyber caves are lovely, but they are dark and deep, far underground and the bells do not carry there, there is only the song of kyber, which Baze does hear, a rarity in one who does not feel the Force. “I am hungry, and I am dirty, and it is not a perfect day.”

Chirrut looks annoyed in the way that only he can, somehow still managing to pull off pompous even when he is streaked in dirt, the bits of kyber in the mud catch the light and sparkle, which only helps to illuminate the put out expression on his face. “You’d think the temple’s poetry aficionado wouldn’t be so literal all the time,” he gripes as though Baze is supposed to know what this means.

Poetry, he wants to tell Chirrut, is easy. Poetry is other people. Other people are easy. Other people are fine. Baze can tell in moments whether they need comforting or intimidating or food or work or rest. Other people he can see through and into like panes of glass. Chirrut is a skewed mirror, nothing in it is what it appears to be. Baze would spend all his time sitting there, looking into it if he could, spend all his time trying to perceive. Nothing, except maybe the Force, is as complicated as Chirrut Imwe. 

Chirrut frowns, Baze stands, neither of them saying anything, both of them speckled with drying mud, which is tightening the hairs on Baze’s body to the point of irritation, almost pain. He should take a shower in water, real water, the sonic never seems to work properly for his hair, can’t penetrate the waves for some reason. Initiate Forqurean tells him that this is all in his head, but Baze’s hair behaves differently when he washes it with water, properly, and becomes nothing but unmanageable frizz in the sonic. 

Finally, as though defeated, itself a rarity but more common with Baze and his silences, Chirrut throws up his arms. “It was a perfect day even if you don’t know why.”

It’s like Chirrut is covered in steam, and Baze would like to reach out and touch him, wipe it away, see if that will make him easier to read, but instead, he folds his arms across his chest. They are not sparring. They are not sleeping. Neither of them is hurt or sad. There is no reason to touch Chirrut now, though that knowledge doesn’t make the itch under the skin, the one that has nothing to do with the dried mud, go away. So he just folds his arms and waits and tries to ignore it. “Why was it then?” he asks because he knows that Chirrut wants him to ask and also because he wants to know. What does Chirrut know that he doesn’t? Baze has read every book in the archive attempting to keep up with his friend, but Chirrut knows things that have never been written down. Chirrut was born with some strange knowledge poured into his head, and Baze does not have the ability to open his brain and devour everything there, though he would if he could.

Chirrut looks at him through his lashes, which are too long, too dark, too lovely. Baze will not admit to having counted them to help him sleep when Chirrut’s body is warm and dense and sprawled across his own. Counted the lashes and wondered at their texture, what they would feel like on his finger, on his cheek. 

Baze only squares his shoulders a little more at the challenge in that look because he does not know if Chirrut means it the way it comes across like he is flirting, like he is waiting for a kiss. “Why then?” Baze repeats, prompted into almost impatience for once, and this makes Chirrut laugh, a sound that echoes and fills the room, a sound that presses into Baze’s chest the way that Chirrut’s arm will in sleep.

“I was with you.”

Four words. Simple, understated, but heavy and sharp-tipped enough to drill into the heart of Jedha herself. Baze thinks it is a wonder he does not physically stagger back, isn’t blown off his feet by the sentiment, which Chirrut releases as easily as if it were a leaf cupped in his hands offered to the wind. Blazing crimson under the mud, Baze feels as though all the words in his head, in his mouth, on his tongue have dried up. His mouth is a desert; if he opened his lips only sand would pour out, he wonders what color it would be. 

Sighing, Chirrut drags himself and his shoes across his duvet again, leaving more smears of somehow still wet mud on it in the process, and Baze knows he will be in his bed tonight, murmuring. “Let’s get this mud off. I’ll wash your hair. “ 

Chirrut is halfway out the door before Baze has the presence of mind to follow, drifts down the hall after him not even paying enough attention to be amused that Chirrut is still fully clothed. They stand under the spray and Baze closes his eyes as Chirrut’s hands slide into his hair, over his scalp, working all the dirt out. Later, he will find specks of kyber on Chirrut’s eyelashes, watch them glitter like stars in the darkness as Chirrut sleeps. For now, he just leans further into Chirrut’s touch and does not comment on the fact that Chirrut has walked into the showers with all his clothes on--”the better to wash off the mud”--and enjoys the touch.

Perfect.

 

II.

There is a heavy weight on his chest, pressing him to the packed clay beneath him, pinning him down, straddling him, and the owner of the weight is pleased, joyous. “I never beat you in wrestling. Tell me you didn’t let me win. You better not have let me win,” Chirrut says from above him, leaning over, close enough to kiss if Baze stretched his own neck up, but he does not. “You better not have let me win,” Chirrut says again but with something in the tone that lets Baze know he wouldn’t really care much if he had.

“Never,” Baze says, but it is a lie that is not a lie. Sometimes he does not let Chirrut win so much as he gets distracted by Chirrut and that allows him to win. The line of his neck, the way his robes flutter and fall when he insists on going through his forms in full regalia because he needs to know how to fight in them, what the weight will do, how it will impact his kicks. Baze never means to lose but somehow he does simply because he cannot manage to win.

Chirrut makes the noise he always does when he doubts something but says nothing and does not move, just lingers there looking down at Baze with glee still in his eyes about the victory. “If I find out you’re lying, you’ll pay for it.”

Baze makes his face soft, hoping his expression will pass for hurt, pained, but it has always been hard for him to feign his emotion even though when it’s real he cannot scrub it from his face. “Are you accusing the most devoted guardian of the Whills of lying?”

“Said with shock as though it would be the first time it’s occurred.” Somehow, Chirrut’s hands have found his wrists and his fingers, rough with calluses, are wrapped around them, tapping against his flesh. 

It has become more difficult for Baze to breathe not because of the weight on his chest, which is hardly anything in the grand scheme of things, and just because of Chirrut’s proximity, his touch on his wrists which is playful in a new way, takes all his air away. “So you are accusing me of lying.”

Chirrut licks his lips and the color is high in his cheeks, likely from tumbling in the dirt with grappling hands under the Jedhan sun but Baze pretends--for a moment--that it is because of him instead. “I am more accusing you of doing things to make me happy.”

Of this, Baze is guilty a hundred, thousand times over. Of this, Baze can be tried and convicted without even a word said in his own defense, and he wouldn’t mind. Not really. It’s the best sort of crime. “I can stop if you prefer.” He does not mean it, truly, but it sounds like the sort of thing that Chirrut would enjoy hearing. It sounds like the sort of thing that might make Chirrut laugh, which is one of Baze’s favorite sounds, better than the prayer bells, better than the festival songs that rise from the streets, that fill the air in NiJedha on the holy days, better than the tinkling of the kyber in the caves, Chirrut’s laugh, Chirrut’s joy.

This time, Chirrut does not laugh, not properly. He huffs out a small noise that might be a laugh and presses forward, closer, his fingers sliding from Baze’s wrists up his arms slightly, and his face is close, near enough that a kiss would barely take any effort at all. “No, actually,” he swallows as though nervous but that is silly because Baze has never known Chirrut nervous about things even when he rightfully should be. Chirrut licks his lips again, and Baze nearly dies on the spot. “What if there were other things you could do, to make me happy? Would you want to know them? Might they make you happy too?”

“A Guardian’s duty is to serve.” To serve the Whills. To serve Jedha. To serve the Force. Baze Malbus has never heard the Force, never felt it. Not the way he can hear Chirrut, feel Chirrut, the heavy press of Chirrut’s weight, the slide of Chirrut’s fingers along his arm, the way that Chirrut will laugh and crow with delight when he is right, when he wins at something, the muttered ramblings in his sleep, an endless stream of words in tangled languages. 

Something in Chirrut’s eyes flickers, and he looks for a moment like he is going to pull away. “That,” his fingers still in their travels, drift lazily back down as though searching for safe harbor, as though concerned that they may have gone too far. “That is not quite what I meant.” 

Chirrut is written in languages that Baze still cannot read no matter how long he spends trying to learn the cipher. When Chirrut’s fingers drift closer to his own, over them, he catches them, threads them together. They have held hands many times over the years, but this sends a thrill down his spine, something concerning and bittersweet, something like the tinge of hope that can be taken away with a simple word, that can break the spun glass intricacy of the world they have where they are together but not completely. Even though he wants it. Baze does want it, is capable of admitting that to himself though only in small snatches, only in quick moments that come and go like a flame caught in the wind. 

“What did you mean?” he asks, his voice small, tight, and is it just his imagination or does Chirrut seem to lean slightly forward in order to hear him better, their hands still tangled, neither of them pulling away, and Chirrut’s thumbs moving to brush over his skin. 

It’s not like Chirrut to pause as though he is looking for words. It’s not like Chirrut to worry his lip between his teeth as though wracked with indecision. It’s not like Chirrut to wait. 

Baze knows all this and waits, allows him as much time as he needs to decide what he wants to do, whether he wants to say it or find something to hide behind. Chirrut is good at that, dodging, keeping anything he doesn’t want to reveal hidden. 

“Nevermind,” Chirrut says after a moment, and Baze thinks it feels like something, some precarious, important thing has passed. He wonders if that is what the Force feels like, something running under everything, something that cannot be seen, something that can trip away at any second, leave you empty without it. “It’s not important.”

“Chirrut.” Baze loosens his grip, expects Chirrut to take his hands back, to jump up and off of him, to dive into a series of tumbles from one side of the room to the other laughing, for the almost between them to retract away into nothing, into something he has imagined, wanted, hoped for, created from his own mind instead of this palpable energy in the air. If it evaporates, Baze isn’t sure whether it will ever be there again, wonders whether he can chase it, if that would be welcome or something out of bounds, something wrong. “What did you mean? How can I make you happy.”

“You already make me happy. Fool.” There is only softness in the words even the one that should be an insult.

Baze contemplates using his weight and the fact that Chirrut seems to be somewhat out of sorts to roll them, to catch Chirrut off guard and see if he can’t get him to tell him unexpectedly. But he doesn’t because the sun has managed to find the window and Chirrut’s face, cutting across the way his cheek remains just slightly rounded, the cut of his chin. Not even the statues in the temple made by master sculptors can compare. “You make me happy too. However, it’s not like you to not tell me what you want.”

“Ah,” he drags the noise out like he can hide behind it, use it to distract Baze. “Perhaps I’m concerned you don’t want the same things.”

Just the suggestion makes his throat constrict, makes it hard to drag air into his lungs, tight as his chest has become with hope. “You’ll never know if you don’t tell me.”

“Consider this,” Chirrut has finally freed his hands, has them hovering near his own chest, one finger out as though about to make a very grand point. “I can only tell you once. Why should I tell you now?”

“Why not?” 

Chirrut lets his hands flutter up into the air and back down like distressed birds, which is something that Baze sees often, his moving hands. They need something to do. Chirrut is full of rushing, coursing energy, burns as brightly as kyber in the dark of the caves below them, and needs somewhere for all of it to go. Baze likes when Chirrut’s hands occupy themselves with his hair, likes when they pat and prod and soothe him. Baze does not quite like watching them dance with nerves through the air like something is wrong.

He reaches for them, and Chirrut lets him catch them, hold them, pull them back down to his chest; Chirrut follows, so close again that a kiss would practically be nothing. Baze knows that Chirrut’s lips are chapped, that he picks at the dry skin there until they bleed. They would not be soft because that is how Chirrut is, rough like the sand that covers most of Jedha. It would not be the kind of kiss that they write about in the poems he has read, but it would be a Chirrut kiss and that would instantly elevate it into something else, something more, something wonderful. 

“Maybe I’m waiting for the perfect moment,” Chirrut says, and he sounds irritated the way he gets when Baze is dozing in the sun, trying to catch up on all the sleep that will not come at night, but Chirrut wants to do things. Chirrut calls him an old man, ancient, gone beyond his years even though they have no way of knowing which one is the elder.

Baze, despite the hiss of better judgment in his ear, reaches a hand up to brush his fingers along the curve of Chirrut’s cheek where the sun lingers, and his skin is warm, flushed, though Baze cannot tell if the color is from the sun or because he is blushing. “It’s already perfect,” he says because he is soft, a bowl of quivering gel like the dishes of solidified bone marrow in the kitchen, wobbling with every movement. 

“Oh?” Chirrut asks because he is ever full of questions. 

“You’re here,” Baze says.

Then Chirrut’s lips are on his, and he was right; they are chapped and also, surprisingly, slightly cold, but they are eager. Baze kisses back just as eager, and he doesn’t realize that the satisfied moan in the air is his own until he notices that Chirrut is giggling above him, breaking the kiss.

“Shut up,” Baze mutters, and he can feel how red he is, how much blood is pumping to his face and to other areas. As Chirrut giggles, he considers ducking his head, hiding, waiting until he isn’t as red, as embarrassed by his stupid body and its stupid wants and his stupid reactions to normal, everyday things. Even if the fact that Chirrut is part of them makes them extraordinary, supernatural, practically divine. 

“Make me,” Chirrut challenges because he has never learned how to stand down or let someone else have the last word in anything.

Baze threads a hand behind his neck and pulls him down and does.

He was right; it’s perfect.

 

III.

Baze spits blood onto the sand and rubs a hand across his face. His hair has come loose from the intricate braids and wrappings, flutters in annoying strands around his face, sticking to the cuts on his cheek, his split lip. He makes a noise that is basically a growl and swipes at them, annoyed, though he doesn’t have the time to properly pin them back now. Sometimes, he thinks about cutting it, shaving it all down to the barest, softest bit of fuzz against his head, the way that Chirrut keeps his hair, but then he wavers, thinking about Chirrut’s fingers threaded through it, wrapped into it, scrabbling over his scalp, pulling slightly, the electric shudder that will suffuse him, leak into his bones, into his toes. He thinks of Chirrut washing it, braiding it, humming into it, Chirrut hiding his face in it, complaining about it getting into his mouth at night, covering him, but always with a smile, always with a laugh, always with a tone that sparks warmth in Baze’s chest. No, he will not be cutting his hair. Not now. Not ever if it’s left in his power.

Spitting more blood into the sand, he hitches the strap of the lightbow further up his shoulder and then begins to walk. Bodies litter the sand around him, things that Jedha will take in stages, little by little with the force of the wind and the scratch of the sand and the predators that rove the wastes, insects and people alike. He has already taken anything he needs, everything he can carry, all their weapons and provisions and a decent amount of their armor. He leaves the bodies in the sand to disappear. He will wash the blood from his hands when he gets home and pretend that it does not linger in his nostrils much longer.

This is not what he was made for, this is not where he thinks he was supposed to go, supposed to be. Most devoted. It sounds like a curse now. It sounds like mockery. He will not wear the colors. He will not recite the prayers or sing the songs. He has fallen beneath them, does not deserve them anymore, is not worthy. The only Force he can still serve sits at a window, blinded, reeling from the brunt of the attacks on their home. 

He frowns and the skin around the healing wound on his face pulls tight, makes him curse and relax a bit in order to make it stop. They have been laid low, their temple razed, their peers scattered or killed, their home occupied. Desperate, needing time to heal and put themselves back together, he took Chirrut to the wastes, to the caves carved into the cliffs, into the statues, the places that no one not raised on the moon would ever be able to find. They hide in the toppled statue, in the rooms carved out by other refugees or by the nomadic tribes who have long since moved away or died out. 

Chirrut likes to linger in the room inside the head and say that he is learning all the secrets of the Jedi through osmosis, that he will be able to gain the secrets of their powers, that he, too, will forge a lightsaber, and then he will cut a swath through the Empire, he will get their home back, he will avenge everyone, even Jedha herself. Chirrut likes to linger in the room inside the head, eyes bandaged, standing in front of the windows that are the eyes and tell Baze what he can “see” outside of it all, what he knows is there, the spread of the sand, the rise of the mesa, the shadow of the ship that lingers, hovers, waits as though a shadow has ever been enough to drive the heart out of Jedha, which has been occupied and tormented and razed before, which has burned and died and rose again. Chirrut will stand at the windows and tell Baze what he sees, and whether he is simply recounting what he knows or if he has gained some other sight, some strange thing gifted by the Force, Baze does not know. What he knows is that he will stand behind Chirrut, arms wrapped around Chirrut’s shoulders, holding him to his chest, listening to him breathe, reminding himself that he is there, trying to cry as quietly as possible so that Chirrut doesn’t know. He knows, of course. Chirrut always knows, but he is good enough to not call attention to it.

The walk to the statue is not far, Baze knows, but he makes it longer on purpose in order to throw off anyone or anything that might be observing him. He never takes the same path back to their new home, even though it’s temporary. He keeps telling himself that, it is temporary, he will not be there forever, he will not linger in the sands for the rest of his life. They will return to NiJedha, he and Chirrut. Chirrut will have it no other way. Chirrut doesn’t like being separated from the city, from the temple even though it is in still smoking ruins, from the kyber caves even though Baze knows those are looted and closed. Chirrut is a Guardian still. Chirrut is a Guardian ever, potentially the only one left on their moon, and a Guardian’s place is at the temple. 

One day, when Chirrut’s wounds have healed, when Chirrut is ready, they will return. Baze doesn’t know what they will do. They have both already proven themselves to be a thorn in the side of the Empire, him with his weapons, killing and looting troopers who patrol the wastes, Chirrut with the dictates of the Whills still thick on his tongue and refusing to stand down on his principles. It’s not going to be easy, life. It’s never going to be easy. He shifts the lightbow a little as he walks, the other hand pressing gingerly against the cut on his lip--someone’s lucky blow that he returned with a killing shot--where the bleeding has slowed but the swelling remains. He already knows that Chirrut will fuss at him the moment he traces his fingers across his face, something he does often now, as soon as Baze enters the room and then multiple times throughout the day. It could be annoying, but it is not. Chirrut can touch him as much as he wants. Chirrut can touch him always. Chirrut can decree that he wants to stitch them together somehow, and Baze would probably agree once all the logistics had been explained and worked out. That is simply who he is, who they are together.

The lantern shaped flowers are blooming on the bits of scrub brush that manage to thrive in the Jedhan waste on sand and harsh wind and little water and plummeting temperatures when the sun goes down. Baze doesn’t understand how they can be so hardy, remembers the care he had to give to all the plants in the temple garden, the way they would cover them at night and water them, how the garden was built near the vent shafts for the kyber caves underneath so the warm, moisture-laden air from the natural underground lakes would rise and help keep the plants thriving. He recalls how he would spend hours there, nurturing growing things. Now he spends hours trekking through the sands, hunting the troopers that come there and killing them or just going out for game, to snare the handful of edible species that call the sands home. Chirrut, raised for years on the NiJedhan streets before the temple took him in, will eat anything. It’s Baze who is picky, Baze who grumbles about the lack of seasoning and choice, the way they don’t have any flour or tea, the way their rice has bits in it that he has to sieve and sieve and sieve again in order to properly clean or they will be tasting sand the entire meal. He doesn’t let Chirrut try to cook anymore because Chirrut just doesn’t bother. “What’s a little sand,” Chirrut will say, and Baze will have to grind his teeth together not to say something biting because it isn’t Chirrut’s fault, and he shouldn’t be so fussy about it at the end of the day.

The lantern flowers sway in the breeze, their stems clicking together as he leans over to examine them, to debate. And then he snaps the branch off, tucking it into the inner flap of his coveralls where it will hopefully not get too crushed. Chirrut has always liked flowers, and Baze has been robbed of the opportunity to bring him any for quite a while since they have been here. With the flowers secured, he hums to himself as he picks his way carefully through the sand. There are many things they don’t tell you about the wastes of Jedha, things he has learned firsthand through living there and the many pilgrimages Chirrut always wanted to take when they were younger, before the world had expanded and collapsed around them. You have to be careful where you tread, the sand is loose and likes to move and there are pits, shafts, caves all over. Some are the entrances to kyber caves, dark and deep enough to let you fall to your doom, and some open to the oceans underneath the crust, waters cold enough to choke you, to drown you in moments. Others will only break your ankle, but that is more than enough to lead to death here, in the middle of nothing where the wind will eat your screams before they can travel to the ears of anyone who could help you. Yes, the wastes of Jedha are a dangerous place to call home, but that helps to protect them in the end. 

Baze sees the rise of the statue in the distance, growing closer with each step, the slopes of it resembling a small set of hills, though he knows better. That rise is the hip, and that the head and that one is the shoulder. One day, the sands of Jedha will swallow the statues, engulf some of the last monuments to the Jedi as surely as the Empire itself has killed them, and he isn’t sure whether or not he likes the idea. They were once close, the Whills and the Jedi, though it has been ages since that was the case. For himself, Baze only ever saw the occasional Jedi from afar when they would voyage to Jedha to slip into the kyber caves or discuss things with the Whills elders. They were always aloof, hooded, quiet in the way of people who think they are above the people they are visiting. Chirrut never stopped being fascinated by them, wanting to know more about how they had harnessed the power of the Force, the way they built their legendary lightsabers, but Baze was tired of them, tired of the infrequent visits that always turned the temple on its head, trips that were always treated like festivals even though the Jedi never participated in the revelry, never even seemed to care that effort had been made for them at all.

Now they are gone, and perhaps the universe is the better for it. Baze does not know. He cannot say. He has never heard or felt the Force enough to understand whether or not the cosmic scales of balance have tipped, and Chirrut doesn’t talk about it, not since the scream he loosed the night everything went wrong. Baze does not ask. Some things are better left alone.

He kicks away the mound of sand that has gathered in front of the bottom of the foot so that the hidden door there will be able to open and then types in the passcode. It takes a few seconds for the computer to kick to life and roll the door back so that he can slip into the darkness beyond. Slapping his hand against the panel on the wall, the door rolls itself back in place, and Baze doesn’t move, barely even breathes until he hears the solid, echoing clunk of the locks falling into place, safety restored for the moment. Once that’s done, he slips the lightbow off his shoulder, hanging it up in its place and then the rest of his packs follow, the outer jacket of his coveralls, the weapon packs, the bags he pilfered from the dead troopers. He’ll go through them and inventory the finds later. 

Opening his coveralls, he settles the lantern flowers on a nearby ledge and then shucks the tan fabric into a puddle at his feet, leaving him in nothing more than loose beige pants and a navy shirt that is tighter around the middle than he is entirely comfortable with but it’s not like they have a large selection of clothing to choose from. Shaking as much sand as possible out of his hair, which is a mess he can tell just from touching it, he grabs the lantern flowers and walks away from the pile in the entryway, closing more doors and locking them behind him as he travels up the hallway in the legs, passing the rooms built into the knees, small, made for storage and then into the bigger living areas chipped into the core of the body.

When they first discovered the hidden quarters, Chirrut claimed it was because he had felt the Force, the presence of Jedi long gone who used to inhabit it. They had been young still, initiates only, taking pilgrimages into the wastes to help with their meditation, to prove themselves to the temple. They were meant to be foraging and building their own shelter, but instead they had taken to tucking themselves into the statue rooms, watching the blow of the sand through the windows in the head, Chirrut meditating, Baze reading. It had been years before either of them would voice the word perfect even though Baze had been thinking it, wonders still whether Chirrut thought it, too, or if he hadn’t settled enough into anything to be able to get anywhere near that sort of concept. Baze still isn’t sure how exactly Chirrut knew about the door in the statue, doesn’t think it has anything to do with the pull of the Force, thinks it’s more likely someone somewhere in NiJedha once said something about it, and Chirrut heard it as a boy, as someone wandering from one corner of the marketplace to the other, small enough and unseen enough and quick enough to carry food and money and secrets away with him. Baze thinks it’s far more likely that he heard about it there and always wanted the opportunity to know, but has never brought this up because what does it matter in the end? They have it. It is safe. That is all that matters. Really.

They spent their honeymoon here. Outside it was raining, the lashing, drowning force of the Jedhan monsoon season, but inside it stayed dry. Inside there was nothing except them, desperate, fevered kisses, hands clutching against flesh to get closer, closer, closer still. This place has somehow always been a little bit of home, especially now that their actual home lies in ruins underneath the shadow of a cruiser stretched out like a lounging loth cat. 

Baze trails a hand along the wall as he walks, remembering better times, thinking he can almost hear the snatches of Chirrut laughing in the air from when they were young, newlyweds, Chirrut’s strong, honed body pressing him against walls, kissing him silly, both of them breathless, laughing, hands fumbling clothes off, whispering “beloved. perfect. mine,” all the many small snatches of words, of uncompleted thoughts, of stillborn poetry that Baze thinks might have soaked into the stone of the statue, enough to make it glow at night like a chunk of kyber crystal. Their lovemaking is no less ardent now, though it tends to be less hurried, less desperate, more a coming home than the race to climax that it could be when young. He wouldn’t trade any of their embraces, though, each type has its place, each one is sacred.

As he nears the head, the small corridor of the neck where he has to hunch slightly in order to fit, he can hear the slide of Chirrut’s feet across the floor, the click of his staff next to him, the frustration evident in every footfall because Chirrut has never dealt well with staying in place. The door is already open so that Baze can see him pacing, stops his progress just to watch him for a moment, the way his robes ripple around his ankles like angry waves, all the layers that Baze delights in unwrapping when Chirrut has enough patience to let him rather than simply showing up in rooms, naked. There has always been something supernatural, otherworldly about Chirrut. He has always glowed like light lives under his skin. He has always thrummed like kyber crystals and sparked like what Baze imagines the Force to be. For Baze, he has always been the Force, the closest he can get to it at least. 

Chirrut turns toward the door, the strip of cloth over his eyes not enough to block the way his eyebrows arch, and he puts his hands on his hips and says, “Enjoying the view?”

“Yes,” Baze admits because there is no reason to lie, there is no reason to hide it.

Chirrut, always pleased with anything resembling a compliment, smiles, and Baze half raises a hand as though the flash of teeth is enough to blind him. “Good,” Chirrut says, followed quickly by, “What did you bring me?”

Baze is moving again, the lantern flowers tucked behind his body, which is silly because Chirrut cannot see them, though he likely already knows they are there. That is how Chirrut is, it’s damn hard to surprise him, especially now. “Why do you think I’ve brought you anything?”

“You’re the definition of doting husband. You’re always bringing me something. It makes me look bad in comparison.”

“Nothing can make you look bad,” Baze says automatically, and then chuckles at the way the comment makes Chirrut stick his chest out like a pleased, primping bird. 

“No, you’re right. It doesn’t make me look bad, but it does make me seem like an ungrateful husband.” He has stopped pacing, just stands there, staff leaning against one hip, which probably shouldn’t be possible, but it’s Chirrut so it likely doesn’t fall strictly by force of will alone, stays just because Chirrut is happy with the image it presents. 

Baze is close enough to touch him now but doesn’t, just stands there regarding him, smiling, one hand behind his back with the flowers. “Never. Your ways of showing gratitude are simply not for public consumption.”

“They could be.” Chirrut has never learned to shut up; Baze loves this about him. “If someone wasn’t so shy.”

“Well,” Baze huffs out, and it’s strange how the slightest flirty word from Chirrut can make his entire neck and face turn crimson, burn with a flush as bright as any he had when he was a boy or when they first started kissing. He is putty in Chirrut’s hands. He is malleable, and he is fine with this, would never want to bend for another. “Perhaps I have brought you something.”

“Oh?” Chirrut asks in mock surprise, and the way his mouth quirks makes the bandage move.

Baze needs to change it again but that can wait a little while, just a few moments more. He doesn’t enjoy the task, which has less to do with tending to Chirrut as that’s an activity he’s been used to for as long as he’s known him and more to do with the fact that he hates seeing his husband wounded. His eyes are milky under the bandages, a mixture of white and blue that is striking and yet discomforting. The skin around his eyes is still healing, the salve that Baze learned how to make as a child in the temple helping to reduce the scarring and the angry red color but slow. It will take a long time still before the skin can be allowed full access to the air and the sand and the dirt of the place they inhabit. If they were in the temple, Baze would have left the wounds uncovered by now, but here he cannot. There is too much chance of irritation and if an infection takes root while they are in the wastes, he doubts he can reverse it. Chirrut would die, and then he would die. As though finally learning some common sense, Chirrut has stopped nagging him about it, stopped tugging at the bandages constantly, stopped furrowing his brow to ruin the wrapping. He has accepted it. As much as Chirrut Imwe is capable of accepting any inconvenience. It’s not the blindness he minds, he’s said, a statement that almost undid Baze, so much as it’s the waiting for what can heal to heal. 

“What did you bring me, husband?” Chirrut has reached one hand out, palm up, cupped to be filled. “Jewels? Treasures? The heart of our enemy? If it’s the latter, just cook that up for me. I’d rather eat it than hold it in my hand. The impact would be greater. A book? A guqin? For you to play for me? I miss your music, beloved. I miss your joy.”

Baze reaches out his free hand to brush his knuckles over Chirrut’s cheek. “Silly man, I have my joy right here.”

“And yet I cannot move you to sing.”

It’s not meant to sting, Baze knows, and yet he cannot help the way his shoulders draw tight for a moment. It is true. There has been no singing since the Jedi fell, since the Empire came, since the fires, since Chirrut’s sight was stolen. There has been no singing. He can no longer find the music in his heart, and this has pained him more than he’s admitted to Chirrut. It doesn’t matter, not really, not in comparison to everything else that has been lost, everything that is happening. What does it matter if one man no longer sings when so many more are dead? He can still avenge them. Isn’t that more important even if it does not bring about as much joy?

As though sensing his distress, Chirrut reaches a hand out to touch him. It only takes two tries for him to find Baze’s chin, which means he is getting better at it, and his fingertips sweep over Baze’s face as though he needs to convince himself that it remains the same as ever. Baze hisses when the pressure moves over his split lip, and Chirrut clicks his tongue. “Someone was quick enough to hit you.”

“I wasn’t lucky enough to avoid them. It’s fine, they won’t manage it again.”

Chirrut’s fingers lighten as he traces over the rest of Baze’s face, and he knows that his husband is now cataloging injuries to tend. That has long been part of their companionship, too. Baze heals all of Chirrut’s wounds, and Chirrut returns the favor, even blind he manages well. “You didn’t use to need luck,” Chirrut says, bitterness seeping into his tone, a potential turn for the worst if Baze lets him linger on it, lets it fester.

“I have never needed luck. I have you. Luck is jealous of that, and it fails me often.” 

The slight scowl remains on Chirrut’s face even as he finishes his examination, his hand having strayed into Baze’s mess of hair, gently trying to coax the tangled strands apart. “I am far better than luck.”

“Yes, beloved.”

“So are you.”

This statement Baze isn’t sure he can agree with so he stays quiet even as Chirrut’s fingers continue their slow progress in his hair. It isn’t going to work, just the finger combing. The only way they will get the knots out, get all the braids and wrappings to right will be for him to sit in front of Chirrut, let Chirrut get the combs and the oil and put it all back in order, slowly, painstakingly. That is for later, though. Right now his knuckles are brushing Chirrut’s cheek while Chirrut says sweet words, and he can almost forget all of the terrible circumstances that have resulted in them being here, the deaths and the running and the Empire and the wreck and ruin of the temple, the occupation of Jedha. For a moment, it melts, and it is just them, together, the way it should be.

“Don’t you want what I brought you?” Baze asks quietly, only a small amount of play in his voice, mostly it is too soft, the sort of tone that would normally result in Chirrut poking him in the side, calling him a lovesick fool, his lovesick fool.

“I already have the best thing.” Chirrut latches a hand onto his shoulder and drags him bodily forward so that there is little space between their bodies, and Baze breaks into a sharp laugh at the action, at the way Chirrut leans up to place a gingerly soft kiss on his chin, likely concerned about the swollen, busted lip. 

Baze wouldn’t care. They have kissed and loved through worse injuries, driven by the compulsion to remind themselves that they live, that they want and love, to allow things like cuts and bruises to stop their ardor. 

“Best?” Baze leans forward to press a kiss against Chirrut’s lips, hard enough to show him that he doesn’t care about the cut, it doesn’t bother him. He could be torn open, everything inside of him spilled out, exposed to the open air, and he would still stop to kiss Chirrut like nothing else mattered. “You overestimate my value.”

Chirrut bites at his lip hard enough to make Baze hiss and then moan with the spark it elicits. “Never,” he insists with so much sincerity it makes Baze shudder. Then he disengages, so fast that Baze stumbles a step forward, glad for once that Chirrut cannot see the action and mock him for it, though the way that Chirrut’s lips quirk upward let him know that his husband is already aware.

“Gift?” Chirrut prompts, hand extended like the spoiled child he can occasionally still be, and Baze rolls his eyes and chuckles.

“Here then, fool.” He finally extends his arm out, the spring of lantern flowers weaving gently in the air. A few of them are crushed from being tucked against his body, but they have mostly held their shape and the scent of them, even as subtle as it is, must be close enough now for Chirrut to catch.

The lines in Chirrut’s face, the ones that began to settle when the news of the Empire started trickling in and have just gotten deeper with each passing day, soothe out to nothing. He looks barely twenty again. He looks free. Chirrut will never not be beautiful, especially to Baze, but in this instant, he looks untroubled, and that is something Baze would travel a thousand miles, die a million deaths, do a hundred tasks in order to bring about forever. He looks at peace. “Oh,” he says, and he reaches his hand out further, questing.

Baze does not wait for him to find them, moves his hand so that Chirrut catches the branch on the first try.

“Oh,” he says again as he brings them close enough for the petals to brush over his lips, his cheek. “Lantern flowers.”

“Do you remember?”

Chirrut clicks his tongue in his typically irritated fashion but it lacks the normal pop so Baze knows that he is actually not annoyed. “Nothing untoward has happened to my mind, you insufferable man.” 

Baze chuckles, watches as Chirrut moves the flowers again so they purposefully brush over his lips, lets his gaze linger there the way he knows Chirrut wants him to. Everything Chirrut does is meant to be seen, and Baze has never disappointed him when it comes to watching. “Just checking. It is said the mind starts to go as one ages.”

“You’re older than me.”

“So you say, but I know my own birthday from the temple records. There is no one to vouch for yours, Chirrut. You could be ancient for all we know, a roving spirit entombed in flesh, vying for all our souls.”

“Then I’ve made a poor choice of companion. You’re too virtuous by far.”

“You’ve fallen for me. I keep you honest. You’ve thrown off your mission because you’re enamored with my loins.”

“True,” Chirrut has moved the flowers up over his cheek, buried his nose in them to inhale their scent, which is faint and sharp and crystalline, like water, like kyber, like the yuzu fruits they used to grow in the temple garden. “Certainly one of your better attributes. Helps to make up for the more disappointing ones.”

Baze chuckles again, his gaze locked onto Chirrut as he continues to brush the flowers over his face, across his lips, even darting his tongue out to run over the petals, which is every bit as suggestive as he wants it to be, and Baze cannot help but grin and shake his head simultaneously at his handful of a husband. “Would you like a list of your disappointing attributes. We can compare and determine which one of us is the better man for putting up with them,” he teases, loops both his arms around Chirrut’s waist now that there is nothing else for him to hold. 

“You’ll win.”

He huffs out a noise and leans over to run his lips across the skin of Chirrut’s throat.

“You always win.” There is a breathy quality to Chirrut’s voice that makes Baze shudder, his skin seeming to hum in anticipation of what is likely to come, slow or hurried undressing, caresses, whispered words and louder exclamations, a rekindling of something between them that never actually seems to die just dims sometimes when the rest of the world demands too much of their attention. 

“Liar,” Baze mutters, though his mouth is still at Chirrut’s neck, kissing over the flesh there, biting lightly, all the things he has learned over the years that can make the other man come decidedly undone. 

“You remember the flowers,” Chirrut says, moves them, drags them down along Baze’s cheek, the brush of the petals so soft that it could be nothing more than a breathe, a hair, nothing save one’s own imagination, the kiss of the Force in the night, something that Baze has never felt. Chirrut kisses like fire, like stone, like someone who thinks everything will end in the next moment. Chirrut kisses like he is pouring himself into everything he does every moment of the day. In this, Baze imagines that loving Chirrut is not quite like loving the Force. He doesn’t think the Force continues the amount of ardor, of want, that Chirrut does. 

The Force, he thinks as he licks along the skin of Chirrut’s neck, cares not for them at all. If it did, if it ever had, it wouldn’t have allowed so much to happen, would it? Chirrut might be the only way he has ever heard, touched, known the Force, but Chirrut has proven himself to be more than the Force, better than it. The Force has failed him, failed them both, but Baze does not imagine Chirrut can ever fail him, and he will never fail Chirrut. If he can help it. He would die first. 

“You remember the flowers,” Chirrut says again because he has never learned patience, not really, has managed to get better at it through practice but still does not like it, continues to want everything now, will not allow Baze to float away on the waves of his own thoughts for hours when he has other plans.

“I remember the flowers,” he says, lifts his head enough to glance at Chirrut who has one of the flowers still hovering at his lips, his tongue continuing to brush against the lantern shape of the petals, tracing it, and Baze shudders again at the knowledge of the things that tongue can do. Of course, he remembers the flowers, springs of them, heavy, swaying around them as their hands were bound together, as they said the words that would make them one in front of everyone in much the way they had already cemented themselves as being one in the face of the Force. The room perfumed heavily with them, there were so many, the flowers themselves right at the cusp of wilting, captured at that perfect moment when the petals turned translucent, letting the light through, so that they looked like they were glowing, like they were lanterns. Chirrut had glowed under them, which was nowhere near a surprise. No, the surprising thing, was how Baze had glowed, too, the way the light glimmered through the flowers and onto his skin, soft illumination like standing under kyber crystals only with warm Jedhan sunlight instead of the blue of the caves. 

“You look like a star,” Chirrut had murmured to him in one of the many languages that Chirrut knew from roving the streets as a child, one of the languages he had taught Baze, still spoke accidentally and heavily in sleep, so many things he was afraid to say in waking. “You look like a sun.” 

Baze had simply shook his head, flushed, full of so much joy that he barely dared speak, worried that all his words would come out wrong, leave his mouth in such a way that they would make Chirrut regret every moment since the kiss, make him want to turn back the clock and return to something simpler, just two boys standing next to each other, just two boys with the love of kinship, no knowledge of anything else. 

“You look like a sun,” Chirrut had said again, insistent, not willing to back down from his assertions. 

“More a moon,” Baze had managed, his voice low, low, and his accent wrong but still understandable. A moon, he thought, made to reflect.

Chirrut had clicked his tongue and ignored the slight scowls on the faces of the masters performing the ceremony. It was his wedding day, after all, and how dare anyone attempt to reign him in. “The moon is pale, waxes, wane, never knows itself.”

“Suns and stars burn up, die, collapse into themselves.”

“Feh,” Chirrut muttered and then shook his head, sending the lantern flowers twined into a crown on his head tinkling against each other. “So we will not be celestial bodies since they are not steadfast enough. Still. You glow like the sun.”

“I will not wax.”

“I will not wane.”

“I will know myself and you.”

“I will not collapse into myself.”

“I will love you.”

“I will love you.”

“Endlessly.”

“Always.”

They were not the standard marriage vows, not in the temple nor on Jedha herself, and they were said hushed, whispered, while they stood before the gathered crowd, having their hands elaborately tied, the faint song of the ceremony ebbing around them, but they were just as good as vows. Baze meant them as vows then and means them as vows still.

“I remember the flowers,” he repeats, smiling gently even though the motion pulls at the cut on his lip, breaks it open again, a drop of blood welling up. 

Chirrut’s fingers find his lip, find the blood, wipe it away gingerly even though Baze is sure more will just rise to the surface. “Endlessly,” he says, and the way he has his head tilted, the soft way he holds his mouth, makes Baze think that he can perhaps see. Despite the bandages. Despite the injuries, the white blue eyes that Baze knows are there, sightless, ruined, the way his skin is drawn up and red around them. Despite all of this, something in the way he turns his head, the way he positions his face makes Baze think Chirrut can see in some way, in the Force way that he has always had, only amplified now.

The Force is not anything that Baze has ever felt, has ever known. He has listened to the singing of kyber crystals, a sound now almost completely hushed and vacant from Jedha, the Empire having managed to ferret out the majority of the crystals or the shafts of the mines buried. Sometimes, he can hear snatches in the waste, finding their way to him from far below the crust, helping him avoid the pits and the falls of hidden chasms, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same as the almost overwhelming din of them while standing in the kyber caves, bathed in their blue light, eyes closed, listening to the symphony of the universe. That has been taken from them. So many things have been taken from them but not this, not this chance to stand in the middle of a room that is not their home but is a home because they are together, not the opportunity to bring each other little gifts, to find snatches of perfection despite everything that has gone wrong. 

There is so much still to do. There is so much to try and avenge. There is the temple gone to ruin, Jedha inhabited, the Jedi wiped out. 

And yet there is always this, Chirrut’s fingers on his lips, Chirrut’s smile warm and teasing, the tinkling of lantern flowers, their slight perfume wafting around them like a cord twined round their two hands. 

“Chirrut.”

“Yes, love,” Chirrut threads the stem of the lantern flowers into Baze’s mess of hair and then drapes that arm over his shoulder, leaning into him, and Baze can feel the strength there, the body honed by years of practice, the man who never learned to back down from anything.

He wishes they were simpler men. He wishes that they were not driven by duty, by loyalty. Other men might be content sitting in these rooms in the wastes. Other men could pack their bags and leave their moon, their home, find somewhere else to be. They cannot. They cannot, and he thinks that might be their death in the end. It does not detract from this moment, though. He can linger in this moment as long as possible. For now, this is all there is, nothing else needs to exist, nothing else needs to matter. 

“This was a perfect day,” Baze says, his arms threaded around Chirrut’s waist, keeping him close, his lips near Chirrut’s ear to whisper the words directly into the shell of it, to let the sounds escape into the whorls, into the depths like filling hollow rocks with secrets when they were children and tossing them into the pools in the kyber caves for Jedha to keep, for Jedha to hold. They are each other’s homes, Baze knows, and he can put all his secrets there. 

Chirrut hums as though he is going to disagree even as he leans closer, his fingers slipping away from Baze’s lips and up to find his own ear under the mess of his hair, tweaking the lobe softly. “And why is it a perfect day?”

“I am with you.” 

The kiss is tinged with the slight taste of blood from Baze’s lip, but he cannot even pay attention because his arms are full of his world, his home, the only bit of the Force that has ever moved for him. Chirrut’s embrace is as bright and as warm as holding shards of kyber crystals, and he pulls him closer still. It is still today. It is still perfect. Nothing else needs to exist in the moment.

Chirrut kisses him, Baze kisses back, and they are a loop, a circle of devotion and love. That is all there needs to be.


End file.
